Too similar to be different? ‘Syrian refugee’ coverage in the Turkish and Norwegian popular media

Abstract

As the number of migrants and refugees continues to rise worldwide, so too has antiimmigrant and anti-refugee rhetoric become an increasingly alarming problem that politicizes the topic. This article analyzes and evaluates media representation on refugees/asylum-seekers in two different countries which have distinct media system as Norway and Turkey. The findings show that media coverage of migration is a salient theme. While the ‘visibility’ of migrants is not lacking, the voices that are heard in the news are still political actors after seven years of the ‘crisis’ in both countries. Unexpectedly, this persistent finding has triggered the politicization of this theme in both countries despite their great disparities.